Harshita Kanuri

My journey into data analytics started during my final year of undergraduate studies in electronics and communication in India, where I completed a data analytics project that made me realize my passion for analysis. After graduating in 2020, I joined Infosys through campus placement and worked for 3 years under an insurance client, but I felt something was missing in my life - I had a bounded existence with only a few friends and relied heavily on my family. I wanted to be independent and excel in my career, so I decided to come to the United States despite hearing about layoffs and job market challenges. I got into the University of Cincinnati and took a big leap, resigning from Infosys and moving to a new country where I knew no one. As an introvert, I had to figure out cooking, finances, and managing my classes all on my own while completing my entire 2-year master's program in just 1 year by taking 16 subjects per semester. There were moments of self-doubt, loneliness, and questioning if my decision was correct, but over time I realized that independence is not about everything being perfect - it's about trusting yourself to figure things out. I became part of a club, started organizing events, built a close group of friends who I still travel with every three months, and gained confidence in my decisions. During my master's, I did a project with the PNC team working with text data and NLP algorithms for the first time, which was a turning point in my career. That project led to an internship, and within one month I secured my current full-time role at Crown Castle as a Business Intelligence Analyst, where I build data models using machine learning and handle all the modeling work that was previously outsourced to consultants.